Almost immediately, the buzzing in Kel’s head, the pain between his shoulder blades, began to subside. He watched through blurred eyes as Jerrod, having emptied his own dose down his throat, slammed the empty phial down on the table, hard enough to crack the glass. He was breathing as if he had been running, his eyes fixed on Kel. When he spoke, it was a low growl.
“Many would say that a promise extracted under duress is no promise at all.”
Merren groaned faintly, but Kel met Jerrod’s gaze. “I know you work out of this shop.” He gestured at the mostly empty restaurant, the chefs behind the counter studiously ignoring them. “I know how to find you. I have the power of the Palace behind me. I could get Jolivet to shut the Maze down. I could follow you to every place you go after that, and shut every one of them down, too. I could follow you like death at your heels and ruin your hellspent life, do you understand me?” He was gripping the edge of the table, his fingers white, the metallic taste still bitter at the back of his throat. “Do you?”
Jerrod rose to his feet, flipping his hood up to cover his hair. He looked down at Kel, expressionless. Kel could see his own reflection, distorted, in Jerrod’s silver mask. “You could,” Jerrod said, “have just led with that.”
“But would that have been as much fun?”
Jerrod muttered something, likely a curse, and stalked out of the shop. After a long moment of utter silence, Merren scrambled to his feet, pushed past Kel, and walked out the door after him.
Kel followed. Merren hadn’t gone far; he was only a few steps ahead, striding angrily along the road. Jerrod was nowhere to be seen, which was no surprise; he’d doubtless vanished down one of the many side streets that branched off Yulan Road like veins off an artery.
Kel didn’t care. He had nearly died, but only nearly; everything was brighter, harder, sharper than it had been before he’d swallowed the cantarella. The world shone like the gloss of light on a diamond.
He had felt this before. He remembered the assassin at the Court in Valderan, how Kel had broken his neck, the small bones crunching under his fingers like flower stems. Afterward, he hadn’t been able to be still, but had paced back and forth across the tiled floor of Conor’s room, unable to slow down long enough for the Palace surgeon to bandage his shoulder. Later, when he’d taken off his shirt, he’d found that his blood had dried on his skin in a maze of spiderwebbed lines.
He caught hold of Merren’s arm. Merren looked at him, startled, blue eyes wide as Kel drew him around a corner, into the shadows of an alley. Kel pushed him up against a wall, not hard but firmly, his hands tangling in the fabric of Merren’s black coat.
Merren’s cheeks were flushed, his mouth downturned, and Kel again had the thought he’d had in Merren’s flat: that he could kiss him. Often when he was like this, when he was high on the exquisite agony of surviving, sex （and its auxiliary activities） could bring him back down to earth. Sometimes it was the only thing that could.
So he kissed Merren. And for a brief moment, Merren kissed back, his hands on Kel’s shoulders, fingers curling in. Kel tasted ginger tea, felt the softness of Merren’s mouth against his. His heart pounded forget, forget, but even as it did, Merren wrenched his face away from Kel’s. Shoved him back with surprising strength. “No,” he said. “Absolutely not. You tried to kill yourself.” He sounded as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “You took poison. On purpose.”
“I was not trying to kill myself,” Kel protested. “I was trying to break Jerrod. I had the antidote—”
“And only my word that it worked!” Merren tried to straighten his jacket. “It was an insane thing to do. Insane and suicidal. And I won’t—”
“I had to do it,” Kel said.
“For who?” Merren demanded, a little wild-eyed. “Andreyen didn’t ask you to do that. He wouldn’t. Did you do it for yourself? For House Aurelian?” He lowered his voice. “You love your Prince; I see that. I thought it was half a joke, this Sword Catcher thing, when I heard it. Who’d do that?” He bit his lower lip, hard. “My father killed himself,” he said. “In the Tully. They weren’t going to hang him. They would have let him out in a few years. But he chose to die and left me and my sister to fend for ourselves on the streets.”
“I am sorry for that,” said Kel, torn between sympathy and defensiveness. What he’d done was dangerous, yes, but so was Ji-An shooting arrows at Crawlers, and Merren wasn’t shouting at her. “But I am used to putting myself in danger, Merren. In fact, I’m going to need more of that cantarella antidote from you. It worked excellently well.” Catching sight of Merren’s expression, he added hastily. “It doesn’t mean I’m going to do that again. I don’t want to die—”
Merren flung up his chemical-scarred hands. “You don’t value your life. That’s a fact. So why should I?”
He walked away, boots throwing up puffs of bone-dry dust as he stalked out of the alley. Speechless, Kel watched him go.
Kel returned to Marivent via the West Path—a limestone track which wound up the side of the Hill through lowlying green shrubs: juniper and wild sage, lavender and rosemary. The sharp green scents helped cut through the fog in his brain, the lingering aftereffect of the cantarella.
He had a sneaking suspicion he owed Merren Asper an apology.
The wind had kicked up by the time he reached the Palace. The flags atop the ramparts snapped in the brisk air, and white squalls danced across the surface of the sea. In the distance, Kel could see half-drowned Tyndaris sharply outlined against the sky. Boats bobbed like toy ships in the harbor, their rhythm matching the sweep of waves against the seawall. Far in the distance, rain clouds were gathering at the horizon’s edge.
After greeting the guards, Kel slipped through the West Gate and went looking for Conor. There had been a Dial Chamber meeting this morning, but surely it would be over by now? They needed to talk, though Kel was dreading the conversation.
He was halfway to the Castel Mitat when he passed Delfina and stopped to ask her if she’d seen the Prince. She rolled her eyes in the way only a lifelong servant of the Palace could. “He’s in the Shining Gallery, playing whatsit,” she said. “Indoor archery.”
Indeed, the doors of the Shining Gallery were standing open. From inside, Kel could hear laughter, interspersed with what sounded like breaking glass. He ducked inside to find that Conor, Charlon Roverge, Lupin Montfaucon, and Joss Falconet had set up a makeshift archery range inside the elegant, high-ceilinged room. They had lined up bottles of wine along the high table on the dais and were taking turns shooting at them with arrows, with whoever wasn’t doing the shooting laying bets on the outcome.
Broken glass was strewn everywhere, amid puddles of multicolored wine and spirits. No wonder Delfina was annoyed.
“A hundred crowns says Montfaucon misses his next shot, Charlon,” drawled Conor, and Kel felt a rare feeling—a flash of real anger, directed at Conor. You owe Beck ten thousand crowns, a debt you haven’t yet paid. What are you doing, betting a hundred on something that pointless?